Figure 1
From: Fibronectin localization and fibrillization are affected by the presence of serum in culture media
Expression of (proto)myofibroblastic markers EDA-FN and α-SMA in response to TGF-β1.
(A): HDFs showed significant amounts of ED-A FN already before TGF-β1 treatment, which is a sign of a protomyofibroblastic phenotype. TGF-β1 clearly induced the development of α-SMA in these cells. (B): Vinculin staining showed that TGF-β1 treatment not only induced the formation of α-SMA-containing stress fibres (green) in HDFs, but also of focal adhesions at their termini (red, magnified in the circles). (C): Top: TGF- β1 concentration in media containing FBS from different sources, which are anonimized; please note that supplier A was used for the experiments in panels A and B and for all experiments reported in the rest of the paper. Bottom: The exposure of HDFs to a 10 ng/mL TGF-β1 dose caused different upregulation of myofibroblast markers depending on the actual TGF-β1 content in the culture medium (measured via ELISA). n = 3 for all experiments (two stars: p-value < 0.01, three stars: p-value < 0.001, obtained through a two-tailed, unpaired T-test).
